ARV treatment is a crucial health intervention and every effort must be made to increase coverage. However, other reproductive health services continue to be neglected, with dire consequences for women.
Source: Open Democracy
It is time that debates surrounding religion and migration in the UK move beyond the almost monolithic focus on Islam, recognising the multiple and fluid ways in which religion shapes, and is in turned shaped by, experiences of migration, says Chloé Lewis and an overall threat to ‘British identity’.
Source: The Independent
Their `century’ shouldn’t be perceived as the end of men. On Sept. 21 Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff became the first woman ever to give the opening speech at UN General Assembly session. She called this ‘the century of women’.
Source: allAfrica.com
When a baby is born, everyone is in awe of how cute, tiny and innocent the baby is. But what turns these little sweet angels into monsters who will beat their wives (or husbands) and children within an inch of their life? What are the influences that will eventually make a man feel no remorse as he plucks off patches of hair from his wife's head in anger or burn their little child out of spite?
Source: This Day Live
Nigerian Airspace Management Agency (NAMA), has instituted an annual scholarship of N250, 000 to support each beneficiary for the training of female engineers in any of the tertiary institutions in the country.
Source: The Citizen
As Tanzania joined the rest of the world to mark this year's World Aids Day on Thursday, some two million women across the country had every reason to celebrate the day.
Source: Daily Monitor
Head of states from the Great Lakes Region are primed to deliberate mechanisms to end gender-based sexual violence, including Femal Genital Mutilation when they meet in Kampala on December 15.
Source: Nairobi Star
The provincial administration in Kuria East and West districts has been told to step up the war against Female Genital Mutilation. The Education Center for the Advancement of Women has written to DCs James Mugwe (Kuria West), Njuki Mutindika (Kuria East) demanding that perpetrators of the vice be brought to book.
Source: Angola Press
The chairperson of the National Electoral Council (CNE), Suzana Inglês, Friday in Luanda expressed concern about a poor adherence of women to the ongoing countrywide voter registration and update process closing its first phase on December 16.
Source: RNW
The Lady Mechanic Initiative in Nigeria trains women, some of whom have been, or are vulnerable of becoming prostitutes, to fix cars. There are even women at work in Kaduna, a state infamous for Sharia law and inter-religious violence.
Source: Myjoyonline
The International Planned Parenthood Federation, the global movement that promotes reproductive health says by 2030 HIV AIDS infections would have drastically reduced to the levels of polio infections today which has almost been eradicated.
On the 20th anniversary of the global Sixteen Days of Activism on gender violence campaign, Shuvai Nyoni Kagoro asks whether ‘the millions of dollars spent in cash and human time’ have significantly reduced the violence women and other marginalised groups face ‘because of their gender’.
Back in March, when I visited Tunisia and Egypt, I met some remarkable women, who told me that for the first time, they really felt Tunisian or Egyptian, and that they were so proud of what women and men had achieved together. It was a phenomenal time to be in Cairo and Tunis. On International Women's Day, I marched down to Tahrir Square, in Cairo, with about a hundred female activists, and felt so proud to be joining them.
Source: Human Right Watch
Mercury, the silvery liquid metal, known to many from old thermometers, is one of the most toxic substances on earth.
Governments from around the world met in Nairobi, Kenya recently to negotiate an international treaty on mercury, under the auspices of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP). Mercury, the silvery liquid metal, known to many from old thermometers, is one of the most toxic substances on earth.
Yet the one million children around the world engaged in artisanal gold mining work with it every day. Inhaling even small doses of its vapor is dangerous. There is no known safe level of exposure.
The content of the mercury treaty, which will be finalized and adopted by 2013, will be of crucial importance for these children. Governments made some limited progress, but the wording isn’t nearly strong enough.
Low-tech artisanal mining is common in many parts of Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The childen mix mercury with their bare hands into the crushed ore to create an amalgam, and then burn the amalgam, causing the mercury to vaporize and leaving behind the gold. Under international law, such work is defined as the worst form of child labor, and hence prohibited.
When I recently visited Mali, in west Africa, a boy no older than 6 told me that he handles mercury: “You mix it in a cup and put it on the fire. I do this at the mining site.”
Then he added: “I would like to leave this work.”
Several other children described to me how they worked with mercury. None of them knew about the health risks. “I started gold mining at a small age,” a 15-year-old girl told me. “I pan for gold, I also work with mercury....I also burn it. I have never heard that this is unhealthy. I work with mercury every day.”
Mercury is particularly harmful for children, as their systems are still developing, and its damage is irreversible. It attacks the central nervous system and several organs, and in higher doses, it can kill. Child laborers working with mercury are at grave risk of mercury poisoning, scientific studies have shown.
Smaller children and even unborn babies are also at risk of getting poisoned from mercury used in gold mining. Artisanal miners in various parts of the world burn the amalgam in the home, with small children right next to them. Mercury can also reach infants through breast milk, and even affect the development of the fetus in the womb.
What is the solution? A complete ban on mercury is unlikely to work, as there are no easy alternatives for artisanal miners to extract gold, and the mining provides a livelihood for millions of people.
What is needed in the mercury treaty is stronger wording that requires governments to stop some of the worst practices, such as child labor with mercury and amalgamation in residential areas. To reduce mercury use by adult miners, governments need to introduce simple technologies such as “retorts”—containers that capture the mercury fumes.
Governments also need to develop a comprehensive way to address the effects of mercury on the health of artisanal mining communities, and on children in particular. The governments will need to engage more actively with people engaged in artisanal mining. They will need to raise awareness of the dangers, build capacity and introduce simple technologies to make improvements and carry out inspections to enforce child labor laws.
That governments have agreed to draft a treaty on this issue is a measure of progress. It is also encouraging that African governments have proposed mandatory national action plans to reduce mercury in artisanal gold mining. But the negotiations addressed health only as a secondary issue.
In the final rounds of review before the treaty is put out for ratification, governments need to press for wording that obliges countries that sign on to take action on both health and the environment. In particular, African, Asian, and Latin American countries should ensure that the new treaty protects the rights of their citizens, including the rights of children to be protected from hazardous labor.
Wealthier countries should stand by their words of concern about the situation and help fund the effort.
That way, they will take mercury out of the hands of children, and help them live healthier lives.
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A group of boys working at Tabakoto mine, in Kéniéba
cercle. Young boys frequently dig holes or pull up the ore with buckets.© 2011 Juliane Kippenberg/Human Rights Watch
South African government has chosen World AIDS Day 2011 to launch its new national strategic plan that, for the first time, will guide not only the national fight against HIV but also tuberculosis (TB) until 2016. The document contains several major policy changes, including the immediate provision of lifelong antiretroviral (ARV) drugs to all HIV-positive mothers and TB patients, as well as a focus on positive prevention.
Running a deficit as high as US$6 billion and forced to cancel its latest round of funding, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, tuberculosis (TB) and Malaria is at a crossroads, and a far cry from where it started.
This week, the world marked World AIDS Day whose 2011 theme was “Getting to Zero.” AWID explores some of the themes that have either come to the fore or persisted since the last World AIDS Day 2010, and which affect women’s getting to zero.
Source: Women E-News
It's an odd question to ask Hillary Clinton, the Obama administration's champion for global women's reproductive rights. But where were the women in her "AIDS-free generation" speech two weeks ago? World AIDS Day is a good time to ask.
Source: Women E-News
Tensions between secularists and Islamists are rising daily in Tunisia.
Source: allAfrica.com
Recently, my young niece came home from school crying. We sought to know what had happened to the usually upbeat Standard Two girl. "They didn't vote for me!" she sobbed.